Dev Discussion Episode 43: The Source Wall Raid

Another thing for elite:

Is there any way we can slightly reduce the amount of rubble needed to progress the phase? It can make the fight needlessly long and the parts with small Perpetua are much more fun.

Also the green and red markers from second boss. As they are Perpetua's attacks, are you able to add them to other boss fights as well?

For the add phases in the Perpetua fight, less rubble needed to progress - but more of a chance for Skullbreakers and/or reflect adds to spawn. Also add the green/red markers from second boss.

That's what I would personally change.

Okay, so I ran the event on a lower alt of mine cause I needed to double back to finish the pointer mission, so I decided I'll the event and relax while just doubling back and all I can say is "holy hell, what in the actual #$%^ is that?"

I have never seen an event instance in this game tuned that highly to date, the first bosses for what is an event instance are an absolute over tuned train wreck, one shotting like mad with their channel attacks and their health is so ridiculously high it's absurd.

You only have to go and take a look at the event alert (which I also did on this character for the pointer mission) to see the night and day difference, I know one is an alert and one is a raid, but the raid is just ridiculous.

Also the damage that Perpetua's eye beam is doing in event is also over tuned in my opinion.

It's the first two fights in the event mode that are in my opinion absolutely and ridiculously over tuned the health and damage output of the Dark Knights need to also be tuned back,

In the Perpetua fight, I think you also need to change the "soul mechanic" to only require one in event, not two. there were people that just simply had no clue what was going on and they just stood there.

It needs to be remembered that the players in these event instances are predominantly incredibly new, the way you've got this event raid tuned, it's over the top and it felt like a "normal raid", just with the door open.

Event is supposed to be a bit of casual fun and in my opinion this was absolutely anything but.

Just to acknowledge my group also observed this issue in our elite run of the raid earlier this afternoon.

Did another elite run today. We were having troubles with overlapping mechanics on the second encounter.

I wouldnt go as far and say, dont let them overlap at all, but a delay of 2 seconds to each other would be good.

For example:
The group up mechanic that appears after the second sub-boss is nearly dead is the main issue. Take that and add the orbital of dawnbreaker on top of that and its impossible to survive because they always appear together. You group up, orbitals kill you. You spread out - the group up mechanic will kill you.
Another example is the merciless pull. The group up mechanic appears, merc pulls and its unlikely that enough players can make it back in time.

For the merciless and group up death combo, immunity would help but there is no option for the dawnbreaker and group up mechanic death combo besides mass density from an atomic tank maybe.

If the orbital phase would be delayed by 2 seconds, the orbitals would still pop up during the group up mechanic but you would still have a chance to roll out in time.

Some groups may not experience this because the boss spawn order plays a big role. For us, dawnbreaker was the 1st extra boss to spawn. This is usaully good because the group up mechanic appears only at 10% but that was already enough to wipe the group several times.

We ultimately ended up disbanding after wiping at least 8 times due to this issue with different bosses.

Anyone else noticed some strange behaviour of the spike wave attack from devastator?

It seems to hit twice in some instances and the only way to survive is to block with a strong shield on top.

Its also player tracking indefinitely, meaning you would have to go out of range in order to survive. Because its range seems almost infinite, the only option is blocking. So, having this issue resolved would be nice.

(This isnt a major issue for elite but may be once elite + gets released)

This is just something that the Spike Wave attack has always done. I’ve thought about bringing it up because it doesn’t seem intentional but well, I couldn’t be bothered with the likely reaction.

I haven't read the other comments, so i'm just gonna report what i've seen.

Bug
At the 2nd boss fight, when you have to group up, the explosion sometimes is delayed by 1-2 seconds.
Me, as a tank, try to get as fast away from group again, after timer ran out ofc.
I already had 2-3 cases where timer was on me as tank, grouping up, and when i saw the explosion i focused on the bosses again. But 2 second later we still died from invisible explosion dmg.

Opinion
In my eyes it was pretty boring to kill 6!! of those titan adds at last Boss.
I'ld rather fight the boss instead of fighting adds for 5 minutes as a tank.

Hmm. Another single room map. How fun. I pug this and beat it no probs. All ya got to do is keep yo distance and hop out of a few aoe’s and ya golden. Wasn’t even a challenge, more like a yawn fest for the high health pools.

Just thought, one possible solution could be to mitigate damage of meteor/orbital/eye beam while hard stunned by the chain attack - a bit like the hotfix for getting orbitals while handcuffed in the Warden Lois Lane fight in Sixth Dimension Elite. Of course you would then need to time when to break out as breaking out too early while the orbital is still active could lead to KOs.

Thanks for all the feedback - it's greatly appreciated!

The following changes will be in an upcoming hotfix. Hopefully these go a long way toward addressing most of the concerns you've raised:

• Dark Knights will no longer become targetable after being defeated
• Merciless' Spinning Blades will disappear when he has been defeated
• Added a slight delay before Source Titans initially attack
• Added a slight delay before Dark Minions initially attack
• Added a slight delay before Perpetua attacks when she rejoins the fight
• Added a slight delay before Dark Knights attack when they first appear
• Added a slight delay and skull icon for Source Titan and Apex Predator charges
• Event: DPS reduction for Titan Lords and Dark Knight
• Event: Reduced the damage from Perpetua's eyebeams
• Blocking will prevent Devastator's Spike Wave knockback
• Devastator no longer tracks his target while using Spike Wave
• Dark Knights will delay using certain attacks when Rebuked Isolation is active
• • This should include things like Dawnbreaker's orbital or Merciless' pull
• Dawnbreaker will use his orbital attack in Normal as he should have been
• Greatly reduced damage from Planet Strike, Source Eruption, or Giant Perpetua's Eyebeam when under the effect of One Who Laugh's Chain Pull, Contagious Laughter, or Dark Impale
• Elite Perpetua: Reduced the amount of rubble required during Perpetua's Giant phases from 6 to 5

Another tweak or two are still in the works as well.
- Quixotic

Uhh, one observation here, maybe I got water in my eyes or something…but why is perpetuas eyebeam curved?

Thanks!

As the Rebuked Isolation is a Perpetua mechanic (the green/red markers from second boss), are we going to see more of this in the Elite Plus?

Examples of ideas:

1. During Perpetua fight, one player gets the Source Beam and has to block (or everyone dies). At the same time another player gets the green stack marker (Rebuked Isolation) and other group members need to stack on that player to reduce the incoming damage. Then, after the animation has finished for the player blocking the Source Beam mechanic, all players get the red marker and have to spread out from each other while minding other mechanics. This can also overlap with soul phase.

2. Have 2 players get green markers at the same time so the group need to spread and split incoming damage for both of the affected players.

Also I really like the bomb phase that Red Death has for the open world bounty. I would have liked to have seen it in the raid (Elite or Elite Plus) when his health is below 50%.

Are there likely to be any additional mechanics to watch out for in Elite Plus?

Not sure why her eyebeams curve - haven't been able to figure that one out - but they have the entire time she's used them. If we can find the cause we'll fix it, but until then I blame it on being too close to the Source Wall



- Quixotic

I have some new twists and turns in the works for Elite Plus...and one or two of your guesses aren't very far off! But I'm not saying any more for now
- Quixotic

Although it looks weird, it gives this boss some uniqueness. We had beams way too often already and this is just nice in terms of visual difference.
Since the area its targeting isnt affected i wouldnt care about it and leave it as it is.

On paper, those are A LOT of changes.... yet, they seem to be not affecting difficulty but rather rng. Looking forward to this since i would like to see the difficulty of elite stay the way it is.

Question:

Feat: Stronger Together

We attempted this feat in normal mode yesterday and all 8 players were within the green group up field. We got it 2x and the feat didnt pop.

Are we supposed to get the mechanic only once? If not, it would be nice to increase the field area a little bit since standing on top of each other seem to not trigger the effect aswell.

You're doing it correctly but there's a bug with the Stronger Together feats at the moment. I fixed that bug last night so I'm hoping it will make it into the next hotfix with those other changes.

- Quixotic